The Apprentice 2013, interview stage, BBC One, review

Gerard O'Donovan reviews the interview stage of The Apprentice.

Ah, the interview round of The Apprentice (BBC One). Don’t we just love it. Car-crash telly rarely yields more mangled wreckage in an hour. My all-time favourite was in series six, when Stuart “the brand” Baggs was ripped to shreds by that bipedal rottweiler Claude Littner with the immortal double whammy “You’re not a brand you’re a 21-year-old kid. You’re not a big fish. You’re not even a fish.” But its place in the humiliation Hall of Fame was threatened last night by Litter’s apoplectic demolition of Jordan Poulton, who had made the rather basic error of not actually owning any of the business he wanted Lord Sugar to invest in.

“Frankly, you’re a parasite," fumed Littner. “This interview is terminated. You can leave now.” The only words Jordan had got out were, “Hi I’m Jordan.”

In what was undoubtedly the best episode of the series so far, if Littner was chief attack dog the rest of the interviewing pack – Margaret Mountford, Mike Soutar and newcomer Claudine Collins, were only marginally less snarly. Ever since they’ve had business plans to get their teeth into as well as the candidates’ more obvious personality defects, the criticisms have got exponentially crueller. Collins dismissed Francesca MacDuff-Varley as “boring” while Soutar dismissed her dance-studio business plan as “farcical”. Luisa Zissman got it in the neck for being “manipulative” and having a “half-baked” online bakery business proposal. She eventually admitted she would “rather give birth again” than repeat the experience.

Most fun was watching the ice-cool Leah Totton give as good as she got – and run a big risk by telling Mike Soutar how his careworn features might be improved by a visit (well, multiple visits realistically) to her proposed chain of “facial aesthetics clinics”. Advice that didn’t do much for his furiously furrowed brow.

The biggest shock of the night, undoubtedly, was Neil Clough, who’d been widely tipped as this year’s winner. His online estate agency plan had a fatal flaw – none of the interviewers thought it stood a snowball's chance in hell of working in the current market – but could he see the problem? No. Never has a man shown more obstinacy in the face of an onslaught. “I totally believe in my idea,” was his oft repeated, indeed only, refrain. In a war his stubborness might have made him a hero; in the Apprentice, where some cap-doffing to the supremos’ better judgement never goes amiss, it proved his Achilles heel.

When the five candidates came the table, Jordan and Neil (“the right man, with the wrong plan” pined a genuinely disappointed Lord Sugar) were swiftly despatched, leaving a nail-biting decision to make from the three remaining ladies and, more importantly, their “very credible business plans”. In the end, Leah’s and Luisa’s proposals were the ones that lit up the pound signs in Lord Sugar’s eyes – while Francesca got the finger and series’ nine’s final “You’re fired.” Aw.

“Both are big risks for different reasons," Lord Sugar mused once he’d packed Luisa and Leah off, laughing and OMG-ing in the back of the limo. “But life’s all about risk. Let’s see how they do in the final.”